It's time to prepare for your children's yearly achievement tests. We trust that the information in this newsletter will be helpful to you in this area of your child's education.

May the Lord richly bless your family for His glory.

Homeschool parents who work closely with their children every day usually know quite accurately where their children are academically and in many other areas.

Standardized achievement tests, however, can affirm both your child's learning progress and your teaching ability.  This objective evaluation can encourage both of you, as well as provide confirmation of your success to other family members, friends, and the state, where required.

See Home School Legal Defense Association's Homeschool Laws in Your State or contact your state's homeschool organization to check your own state's laws and confirm:

 1.  If your child is required to be tested and at what ages or grade levels.

 2.  What tests are acceptable and who can administer the test.

 3.  If and when you need to report your child's test scores.

 4.  If there is another method of evaluation permitted, such as a portfolio of your child's work or an educator's appraisal.

Remember that a standardized achievement test cannot measure the sum total of your child's progress.  It is only one assessment tool with limited value.

1.  Measure your child's ability to recall certain facts, basic skills, and concepts common to the grade tested.

2.  Compare your child's scores with other students' scores.

3.  Assess your child's year-to-year development of learning, if the same test is used for several years.

4.  Help you determine your child's academic strengths and weaknesses, as well as the effectiveness of your curriculum, teaching methods, or emphasis, when results are combined with your own observations.

1.  Tell you if your child has achieved academically to the level of his ability.

2.  Measure your child's intelligence or the many other skills and abilities not on the test.

3.  Replace your own informed evaluation of your child's knowledge and skills, gained from your daily observation of his work and more thorough and frequent review questions.

Steve Deckard, Ed.D., Assistant Professor, Institute for Creation Research states:

"One aspect of education where evolutionary theory has had a stranglehold is standardized testing. This is especially true for standardized science achievement tests.

"These tests have been written from a secular, humanistic, and evolutionary world view. Because of this inherent bias, young people educated in evangelical Christian private or home schools which teach creation science are at a distinct disadvantage."

Inge Cannon, of HomeSchool Transcripts, observes, "As the culture moves in the direction of secularism and away from any demonstration of Biblical values, Christians will find the gap between what they are teaching and what the tests measure to grow increasingly wider."

Inge goes on to recommend that homeschoolers:

1.  Take only the basic battery (reading, math, language arts) and avoid the additional tests that make up the complete battery (science, social studies, and at lower levels, the environment) if they must take a standardized achievement test.

2.  Strive to change state homeschool laws to reflect this option or to allow for other forms of evaluation.

For information on these common standardized achievement tests and practice tests, follow the links below. Also check with your state or local homeschool organization for local sources of tests and testing services. (See a comparison chart of the SAT10, CAT/6, CTBS, CAT/5 and CAT/5 Survey.)

It is wise to prepare your child for a test and teach him some basic test-taking skills.

The desire to do well on a year-end test can provide added accountability and motivation for learning throughout your school year.

You will choose the material you teach your child based on more important criteria than passing a test.  In fact, much of the most vital information you want your child to learn will not appear on a standardized achievement test.

(See Newsletter #693 about setting spiritual, academic, social, and life skills goals and objectives.)

However, be sure to include all information the test will cover in your curriculum.

•  Create or buy study aids for teaching and reviewing key facts and information that needs to be memorized such as multiplication/division flashcards (free printable), checklists, outlines, and summaries.

•  Don't overplay the test's importance.

•  Help your child approach his test with confidence and a positive attitude of doing his best.

•  Explain that this test is to show how much he knows and that he is not expected to know everything on the test, although he might know a lot of it.

A practice test (see sources above) will increase your child's self-confidence and reduce his test anxiety.

•  Use a practice test to familiarize your child with testing formats, directions, strategies, and sample questions (not exact questions) similar to those found in the test.

Benefits of Practice Tests

A reader writes: "I have found it not only helpful, but almost essential to go through practice tests with our children well in advance of the test itself.
     "We always find something just a little different from what we studied, and this gives us time to prepare. Two different tests are even better, for the same reason, and help children become more at home with different wording and formats."

Selecting a Testing Administer

A reader writes: "Our children do very well in a private testing situation in the administrator's home.
     • "Ask your local Christian homeschool support group leaders who is qualified to administer standardized tests in your area.
     • "Arrange a brief get-acquainted interview in the test-giver's home.  Look for someone who is patient and kind with young children and who believes in home education.  Then make an appointment for the test.
     • "Have your child take his test early enough to retake it if necessary after you see the results."

There are specific skills and strategies involved in taking tests that can help your child do his best.

•  Always listen to and read the directions carefully; don't assume that you already know them.  Sometimes they change only slightly, but significantly, from one section to the next.

•  Ask the instructor to explain any directions that you do not understand.

•  Be sure you know how and where to mark the answers, especially if they are on a separate sheet.  Keep checking to make sure you are marking the numbered answer space that matches the numbered question and for the correct test section (e.g., spelling, math computations).

•  Mark answers carefully and neatly, filling in the blanks completely so that it will be graded correctly.

•  Erase a wrong answer thoroughly when changing your answer.

•  Watch out for wording such as "Which of the following is not true?" or for answers that sound or look similar.

•  On a true or false question, watch for the words "never," "always," "only," and "best."

•  Relax by taking several slow, deep breaths and changing your position from time to time.

•  Remember that you know a lot of information and that you are doing your best to show what you know.

•  Ask the Lord to help you remember what you learned and do your best.

•  Since most tests are timed, don't get bogged down on a question that you can't answer or are unsure about.

•  Answer the items you are sure of first.  This builds confidence, and you won't miss points on easy questions by running out of time.

•  Skip difficult questions and place an "x" by the number of the question in the margin on the answer sheet.

•  If you are not sure of a question, answer the best you can and mark them with a "?" in the margin.

•  When you have answered all the other questions, answer the questions with an "x" in the margin and recheck questions you marked with a "?".

•  If you need to, look back at the reading selection to check facts and ideas.

•  Try each answer in the blank to help you decide which one sounds right.

•  Sometimes on questions where you are to find mistakes, none are to be found.

•  On some questions, two answers can be correct and you must choose the answer that includes them both.

•  When you are not sure, eliminate answers you know are incorrect and take your best guess among the rest.  Some of your guesses will be right.

•  On arithmetic test items, do a quick estimate with rounded-off numbers.  This will help you avoid "silly" mistakes and may even help you locate the only possible answer.

•  When you copy a math problem onto scratch paper, line up the numbers carefully and double check your copying.

•  Always check subtraction problems by reversing operations.

•  If you have time, check equations by substituting your solution for the unknown and check other math problems by reversing operations.

•  Use all the time allotted for the test; review your test if you finish early.

•  Recheck the directions, questions, and your answers.

•  Do not change answers unless they are obviously wrong.

•  Don't panic when students start handing in their papers. There's no reward for being the first.

See many more test taking tips at Test Taking Tips.com including:

 •  General Test Taking Tips (test preparation, at the test, and post test), and Specific Test Taking Tips (multiple choice, essay, true/false, oral, short answer, quantitative/math, and open book).

 •  Reducing Test Taking Anxiety

 •  Test Taking Tips for Parents, provide suggestions for parents to help their kids improve their test taking skills.

The basic terms below will help you understand your child's test results.  (For definitions of additional terms see Glossary of Standardized Testing Terms.)

•  Criterion-referenced tests compare a student's performance to set criteria, such as state standards, rather than to the performance of other students.

•  Norm-referenced tests compare a student's performance to a national reference group of students at the same grade.

•  Standards-based tests assess students' knowledge and skills in relation to the state content standards.

Percentile does not refer to the percent of questions that were answered correctly.

Percentile ranks individuals within a group on a scale of 1 to 99 with 50 being average.  A percentile rank of 60 means the student scored better than 60 percent of the other students in his comparison (norm) group, and 40 percent scored as well as, or better than, he did.

This score shows a comparison of student scores, from a low of 1 to a high of 9.  It may be thought of as groupings of percentile ranks.

This is the most commonly misunderstood term in interpreting test scores.

The first digit represents the year of the grade level and the digit after the decimal represents the month of that grade level.

The grade equivalent is not an estimate of the grade in which your child should be placed! Rather it shows that the score your child achieved was the same as the average score made by students at that grade level who took the same test.

For example a 2nd grade student scoring 4.7 on a math subtest, scored the same as the average 4th grade, 7th month student did who took the 2nd grade test.  It does not mean that the 2nd grade student can do 4th grade math work.

Read online article by BJU Press, "What do Tests Really Tell?," for more information and examples.

The following suggestions come from Bob Jones University Press.

If your child receives a low score, always compare that information with your own observations.  If the low score is consistent with your personal observation and evaluation of your child's skill, develop a plan to strengthen this skill.

Your plan could include:

 •  Checking to see if the skill was taught

 •  Re-teaching the skill from a different approach

 •  Checking curriculum content and methodology

 •  Evaluating the effectiveness of your teaching methods.